Review of Kundun (1997) by Melissa M — 03 Mar 2013

The movie "Kundun" was a beautiful, vibrant, unusual, yet calmingly semi-realistic movie about the fourteenth Dali Lama. In the beginning of this movie, four years after the death of the 13th Dalai Lama, the 14th Dalai Lama is discovered around the age of two or three in a Tibetan village near the border of China. The boy loves to hear the story of his birth and how he didn't make a single cry when he entered the world. His family told him that on the day of his birth he was guarded by two crows, which is a similar scenario of how there were two crows around the 13th Dalai Lama on the day he died. This movie captured the world view of a boy who has been pampered and sheltered his entire life and who was believed to be the reincarnated 13th Dalai Lama. This child's discoverer places an assortment of objects before the child for him to decide which were his. Some of these objects belonged to the previous Dalai Lama and others did not. The boy chose the correct objects and in a childish way calling them "mine mine mine!" Two years later, the boy was taken to live with the monks and to claim his place in history.

Everywhere the child is convoyed he peers out and watches the spectators as though fascinated by commonplace people. He is taken to a palace that has animals like fish and deer and peacocks. He is given a movie projector and a radio where he keeps up with the news. Soon after he watches a horrific movie, he learns that China has invaded Tibet. These horrors force the Dalai Lama outside of his enclosed Buddhist world. He doesn't know what to do in this situation and how to continue practicing a life of nonviolence. He read a letter from the 13th Dalai Lama who forecasted that China would destroy religion in Tibet. He asks his advisor "What can I do. I am only a boy." His advisor replies back with "You are the man who wrote this letter. You must know what to do." At this point in the movie I was amazed at how much literal faith they put into reincarnation and that this child (now guesstimating around 14 or 15 years of age) was the one who wrote this letter and who had died just four years before this child was born.

Remaining devoted to the Buddhist ways of compassion and nonviolence, Kundun is caught in the middle of one of the most ferocious attacks with China's claim and control over Tibet, the young Dalai Lama appears to be constantly struggling with ideas and ways to avert the Chinese from taking over Tibet but in every effort and every protest, he fails. All of his protests are ignored and he is eventually forced to leave and go to India because his safety is at jeopardy.